Climate change is unfolding with levels of extremity like never before, causing catastrophic socio-economic-environmental loss and massive ecosystem disintegration around the world. Along with it, climate governance is at an impasse. Moving beyond expert ontologies and treating climate adaptation as an integral part of livelihood (re)making, this guest lecture highlights the need to decipher past knowledge on grassroot adaptation practices, including through historical research and inter-generational understanding, and connects these with present and future adaptation strategies. It investigates how knowledge (re)production processes are rooted in and derived from symbiotic relations (or the lack thereof) between the different types and forms of knowledge, local institutional rules, arrangements, and practices, and the power dynamics that shape it. Positioning climate adaptation as place-based responses where knowledge, culture, and agency intersect, it traces grassroots and inter-scalar evolutionary adaptation pathways and processes in four distinct yet interrelated socio-ecological systems in Southeast Asia: 1) upland cultivation in Laos; 2) irrigated agriculture in Indonesia; 3) forest conservation in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands; and 4) sea nomads’ fishing territories in the Philippines.

Diana Suhardiman is Professor of Natural Resource Governance, Climate and Equity at Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University and Director at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). Working at the intersection of water, land, climate, and environmental governance, her research focuses on the politics of knowledge (re)production and state transformation processes in Southeast Asia.